Health-Care Ruling: Why Not the Commerce Clause?

It’s important that Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., while holding that the individual mandate passes muster as a tax, didn’t buy the Obama administration’s chief argument — that Congress can use its powers to regulate interstate commerce to require people to buy insurance.

Many of the law’s challengers had argued that were Congress able to do so, then it could force people buy many other things, like, say, broccoli, because it’s good for them.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. agreed upholding the mandate as within Congress’s powers under the so-called Commerce Clause would open up a can of worms. From his opinion:

Given its expansive scope, it is no surprise that Congress has employed the commerce power in a wide variety of ways to address the pressing needs of the time. But Congress has never attempted to rely on that power to compel individuals not engaged in commerce to purchase an unwanted product. . .